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Today is an assault on the eardrums.
It’s as if this day was appointed for CLEANUP.
One can hardly complain about farm vehicles here and I don’t mind those. It’s the cacophony of:
Lawn mowers and leaf blowers.
It’s the latter that really get on my nerves because I simply cannot comprehend their purpose.
What earthly good does it do to blow leaves out of a gutter to which they will immediately return in the first puff of wind?
Maybe I’m missing something?
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While Grant did the shopping, I watched a kid operating one of those abominable contraptions.
Presumably the kid was wearing ear defenders, but he had the motor strapped on like a back pack and I could feel its vibrations in the car.
How can that be good for a person? My own brain felt rattled.
Perhaps I’m just too sensitive?
🙂
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It’s funny how one conversation leads to another.
Sometimes Grant and I do the washing up together, but our methods are different. It occasions light-hearted banter.
The other day I observed that there was more water on the far side of the draining board than in the sink.
This led to a discussion (I use the term loosely) of physics and this took me back to school…again.
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This time though, it was all the way back to 1953 when I was quite small and life was very different, many things having not yet been invented.
One day we were all handed a small slate upon which we were to draw a picture using a piece of chalk.
Drawing an outdoor scene, I filled in the sky but teacher was very cross about that, scolding me for wasting chalk.
I was a “naughty girl!”
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Whether it was the teacher being annoyed or my drawing having failed that I was most upset about, I don’t recall.
It wasn’t bad to be taught not to waste, but in those days we all learned this at home.
Later on, I remember being given a sheet of paper to write or draw on and regarding it as something precious.
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Back then I knew nothing of depleted forests which are only part of why I still cringe over the wastage of paper.
It was when I was five that I first heard of kingfishers. On a shelf in my classroom there was such a bird mounted inside a glass case. I was fascinated by it but I was sad that it was dead.
That bird was bright blue and red.
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Of my second year in school, I don’t remember much, just that the classroom was adjacent and faced the other way and it seemed darker, but I’ve no idea why I recall it that way.
Perhaps it’s because the one thing that remains in my mind quite clearly, is the image of my teacher climbing onto our desks with a spill to activate gaslights.
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It must have been when I was six that I was diagnosed with asthma, after I’d been unable to run around during PT. After that, when it was time for physical education, I remained indoors with a couple of other children. One of them had a heart condition. It may have been she who fainted periodically during assembly.
1954 must have been the year of childhood diseases too, measles and mumps. It kept me out of trouble with my teacher.
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But that didn’t last long.
In 1955 I moved to a classroom upstairs.
Maybe I was a peculiar child. I just wanted everyone to be happy, which is why I smiled at people on the underground.
Miss Plumer admonished us one day to remain at our desks in silence!
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Poor little simpleton that I was, I decided my teacher needed cheering up and I knew she would be thrilled by my news.
So I left my desk, marched up to her and announced:
“I’m having tea with Sheena today!”
Strangely, it did not have the desired effect.
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What was surprising though, was that I merely got sent back to my desk. Maybe the woman was amused rather than annoyed.
Perhaps I had cheered her up.
In that same year my classmates and I got sorted into baptised and not-baptised. Those of us in the latter group were Mary Magdalens. I’m not sure how the boys felt about it but I didn’t like it.
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That afternoon I told my parents I wished to be christened. As we lived opposite a church, I needed only to cross the road.
It didn’t happen and at the end of that year, my father went off to take his job with UNESCO in Cambodia, leaving my mum to sort out the flat, the budgie and oh yes, the children!
My brother passed his 11+ and Mum approached him by asking did he want to come to Cambodia?
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“Do they play cricket there?” he asked
Told no, he said he didn’t want to go. All that remained was to find him a boarding school.
The budgie co-operated by dropping dead weeks before our departure and my hamster was (supposedly) given to the family upstairs.
But my brother believes it had a darker end.
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School pictures.
Thank you, Carolyn, for the interesting pictures, and your childhood memories.
Joanna
I enjoy these nostalgia posts. We are not that far apart in age, but our childhoods couldn’t have been more different.
Best wishes, Pete.
Hat wonderful and interesting memories! Thanks so much for sharing. ❤️
Awful though they often are in terms of their impact on you – i do love all the reminiscences of your childhood.
I love the smell of freshly cut grass … but not from the noise that comes with it. I’m surprised how well you remember detail from your (young) childhood. All I remember from my first two years at school was that it was fun and that my teacher always smelled like flowers. Love the photos of you and brother – you have such a gentle expression.
I don’t know about playing cricket, but that hawk looks as if he’s playing football!